Personality

Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.

What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.

That reminds me.....what are some standard stupid questions like that in other nations?

Ooh, Ooh! I heard this one, it took me a while.
"What was (name)'s name?" the answer of course is (name)!

Indeed, and "What color was George Washington's white horse?"
How is one supposed to know that Grant's wife was buried with him? I think that that question requires more knowledge than common sense on the part of the bot.

'Grant' is good enough, I think. That's the way I always heard it as a kid. Only recently have the trivia folks gotten picky.

I don't just mean questions referring to themselves (although it would be good to know which ones would come up). I mean, are there some other silly ones that would be helpful for the bot to prepare for in advance? Especially those unique to a certain country? Most of the ones I know of already are song lyrics ('Who wrote the book of love?') or things that are already pretty universal here ('How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,' etc.).

Old jokes and ads would be others to consider.

If you've not already done so, you need special keyphrases for these:
'what is a bot'
'what is a chatbot'
'what is a chatterbot'
(Depending on your style, you may want to change the wording or use wildcards, in case the user says 'What the hell is a chatterbot?' or something of that nature.)

The WordNet thing in our bots does not recognize those words except for 'bot' which it takes to mean 'botfly larva.'

One of those silly questions in the UK is: "Where was the battle of Hastings fought?" The right answer isn't "Hastings", but "Battle". The battle of Hastings was the most important battle in Great Britain in the Middle Ages (consult a history book for details). It was fought in a field near Hastings, and afterwards an abbey was built on the exact site of the battle. Then, a little village grew around the abbey, that was called, quite sensibly, Battle.

To clarify misunderstandings, I didn't leave my job because of the Forge. I left it because it was horrible and I was bored with it. I was going to the Forge in office hours because it was so boring.

Not just questions referring to themselves?
How about "What would this sentence be like if it were not self-referential?"

If my bot replys "......" can I give it partial credit on that question?

What is this question asking?

quiet

You don't like self-referential sentences like this one?

Oh, and welcome to the Forge.